


when you're feeling warm, the temperature can drop away

by OpheliaRising



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Chicago Blackhawks, Concussions, Gen, Hockey, Hurt/Comfort, Pittsburgh Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 20:24:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/299710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpheliaRising/pseuds/OpheliaRising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things are easier to say in the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you're feeling warm, the temperature can drop away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Monksandbones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monksandbones/gifts).



 

The clock reads several minutes past midnight when the doorbell rings.

Jonathan Toews groans, rolls over in his bed, and prepares to kill Patrick Kane. His bathrobe is laying draped across a nearby dresser, and the five feet of floorspace between it and the edge of the bed suddenly looks like an eternity of cold in comparison to the warm hollow he's created for himself beneath the covers. The enormous windows of his bedroom are painted by a steady rain and show the lights of the city around him in diffuse starbursts, impressionistic. The buzzer sounds again, and Jonathan reluctantly levers himself up to shove his feet into slippers and go see what Kaner wants at ass-o-clock in the morning.

The front door yanks open with satisfying force, and Jonathan is well into his, "What the _fuck_ , Kaner, you know we've got a game tomorrow --" rant when he notices that the person standing outside is not, in fact, Kaner.

The visitor before him is wearing black trousers and a black calf-length overcoat, black leather gloves, a black ballcap with the brim pulled low over his face, and sunglasses. Indoors, at midnight. A duffle bag sits on the floor at his feet. Jonathan blinks, and finally recognizes the person in his hallway.

"Sidney?" Then, because a part of his brain is still sleep-hazed, "You look like you're in the Mafia."

Sidney shrugs and shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat, pulling the fabric into taut lines. Jonathan steps back to allow Sidney to step past him into the apartment, swiping the ballcap as he passes to put it on a peg beside the door. The curly ends of Sidney's hair are damp and glistening with the rain.

"Sorry I woke you up," says Sidney, his back turned as he locates a hanger for the overcoat in the coat closet.

"I didn't think you were traveling with the team."

"I'm not. That's why I don't have curfew." Jonathan can't hold back a yawn, and Sidney's shoulders droop. "This is bad. I should let you sleep. I wasn't thinking, coming here so late." He's halfway through putting the coat back on before Jonathan can get a hand on his shoulder.

"Hey, wait. So you flew over here by yourself instead of with the team and then you came here." Jonathan nods his head at the duffle bag. "Do you even have a hotel room yet? I mean, you've still got your stuff with you." The nagging sense of wariness that something is wrong grows steadily stronger when Sidney glances away, down towards the floor.

"I just wasn't thinking," says Sidney, and Jonathan's wariness dips into full-blown worry. "I'll just get a room when I get to the hotel. The Hilton's never booked up this time of year anyway."

"Sidney."

"I just really wasn't thinking." Jonathan lets the pause stretch out, waits and listens to the rain outside until Sidney finally relents. "I wanted to watch when we played you guys, and I wanted to see you again. I know you guys are road-tripping after tomorrow's game, and I just didn't think about the plane getting in late."

Jonathan looks at the duffle bag again and imagines Sidney standing in the airport, just off the plane, giving Jonathan's address to the cab driver instead of asking for the Hilton, where he knows damned well the team is staying.

"I should go," says Sidney, and Jonathan reaches a decision.

"I've got an extra room. The bed's probably better than a hotel. We can hang out in the morning."

Sidney hesitates for a moment, then nods. He looks tired, Jonathan thinks, tired in a way that has nothing to do with lack of sleep. The fine lines at the edge of Sidney's eyes are suddenly a reassurance that he's doing the right thing, that whatever need brought Sidney to his door like a bedraggled stray is important enough that Jonathan cannot send him away.

"Come on." Jonathan hoists the duffle and leaves Sidney to finish hanging up the coat. He's already got the bag open on the bed by the time Sidney catches up, and he hovers until Sidney begins to unpack and settle in.

"My room's right across the hall if you need anything." Sidney nods, distracted as he wrestles his shaving kit out of the duffle. "I'll see you tomorrow." The tone comes out as more of a question than Jonathan had hoped, but Sidney raises his head and meets his eyes, smiling faintly.

"I'll be here."

Jonathan nods and closes the door gently behind himself to leave Sidney to his bedtime routine. When he strips off the robe and crawls back into his own bed, he finds the sheets cool and less than welcoming against his skin. Jonathan shivers, pulls the blankets closer, and closes his eyes.

*

It's still dark the next time he awakens, still silent but for the rain against the windows. There's a nagging sense of something _off_ at the base of his neck, a primitive tingle in his spine that dragged him out of sleep. Jonathan turns onto his back with a groan and cracks his eyes open to see Sidney leaning against the doorpost, an indistinct figure of deeper blackness against the dark of the hallway.

"Sid?" His voice comes out about an octave and a half below its normal range, scratchy and ill-used.

"I didn't mean to wake you up." Sidney is almost whispering, but the apartment is quiet enough that Jonathan can hear him anyway.

"What?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd check on you. I didn't think it would wake you up."

Gravity seems to drag his eyelids closed again, and Jonathan doesn't fight it. He can hear Sidney fidget, drag a foot across the carpet, then the steady tread of footfalls towards the bed, so he isn't wholly surprised when the mattress dips and he reaches out to find Sidney sitting beside him. He makes a low, interrogatory noise in his throat, too close to the edge of sleep to bother with actual words.

"They say it's my head. Why I can't sleep. The concussion, you know."

"They say." Jonathan's hand does a little wandering to try and figure out how Sidney is situated without opening his eyes. He finds the edge of a knee; a hand braced back against the mattress leads up a taut forearm to a locked elbow. Jonathan runs his palm back down until his hand is resting on the bed, two fingertips still in contact with the inside of Sidney's wrist, resting against the vein.

"I don't know. Sometimes I think they're wrong. I haven't been working out as much, haven't been skating like I do when I'm in games, so maybe I'm just not tired. Or even when I am tired, I'm still restless."

"You miss it," says Jonathan, slurred but certain.

Sidney doesn't reply and doesn't need to. Jonathan slides his hand up an inch, two, enough to grip around Sidney's wrist and squeeze, feeling the bones beneath his fingers.

"A year," says Sidney at last.

"Haven't been off skates that long since I was two."

A sigh from Sidney, a long pause. "I think about Savvy sometimes."

"Savard? Mark?"

"He's never coming back, and he knows it. I've talked to him. He knows, it's in his voice. Sometimes I wonder if that's me, and I'm just too dumb to have figured it out yet."

Jonathan opens his eyes, then tugs at the wrist he's still holding. He wriggles away from his warm pocket of blankets, far enough back across the bed that there's room to tug and poke and prod Sidney into laying down. Jonathan yanks a pillow over for himself, leaving Sidney stiff and obviously uncomfortable on top of the covers. Neither says anything for a long time, and the blankets have begun to warm to his body heat by the time Sidney finally gives in and adjusts himself minutely -- flex of shoulders, stretch of calf -- until he's laying relaxed on his side.

"You're not Savvy," says Jonathan.

Sidney's lack of reply is answer enough, doubts gathered thick as shadows in the room. There is nothing certain that he can say in appeasement, so Jonathan instead reaches a hand over to cradle Sidney's skull, tucks his little finger against the patch of bare skin behind an ear and spreads the rest of his fingers wide, as though he could feel through thick bones to the fragile tissue beneath. The rain has long since dried out of Sidney's hair, leaving behind messy curls and a sense of raw-edged softness that never emerges in public. Jonathan has seen Sidney this quiet and open only once before: the last night of the Olympics, after the medals and the parties and all the press, and it was just a few of them from the team left in a lounge, Sidney sunk deep in a beanbag chair, eyes weighty and guileless. Different times, thinks Jonathan. His pinkie finger curls in small motions, stroking the very edge of the hairline behind Sidney's ear.

The silence stretches, and Jonathan is very nearly asleep again when Sidney huffs out a laugh. Jonathan hums lazily in question.

"I just realized that I won't even be able to watch the game tomorrow night. Guess I really didn't do much planning before I headed out here."

"You can have my tickets, if you want them."

"Wouldn't work. Mario would have my head if I showed up on TV with the Chicago wives and girlfriends, and I can't exactly ask for pressbox seats with the Pens because I'm not even supposed to be here. Can't just buy tickets like a normal person, because the whole crowd is hockey fans who will recognize me, and if I showed up in the lower bowl, there'd be a riot."

"Your life is hard," says Jonathan, and receives a tap on the bicep in lazy approximation of a punch from Sidney. A moment to think, then, "Don't worry about it. You can sit in the radio booth. I'll make a call in the morning." John Wiedeman and Troy Murray have done the Blackhawks radio call for years and would probably get a kick out of having Sidney Crosby riding shotgun with them for the Pens game.

"Thanks." More quiet, and as Jonathan's muscles relax, his hand slides down to drape against the curve of Sidney's neck. No complaints are forthcoming, so he leaves it there and wonders hazily if Sidney is still feeling restless, whether the insomnia is a constant or whether Sidney just needed to talk tonight and will sleep now. The thought drifts, insubstantial and misty. Sidney's skin is warm and his muscles lax, a flutter of pulse nearly imperceptible beneath Jonathan's hand. The rhythm of heartbeat, the patter of rain against the windows, the warm sheets, and the rise and fall of his own breath are all comforting, familiar. Jonathan slips into sleep.

*

The clock reads exactly eight o'clock in the morning when the alarm goes off with a screech.

Jonathan peels his hand off Sidney's skin and flails behind himself until he finds the snooze switch for the noise. By the time he turns back over Sidney is awake, still on his side and watching Jonathan steadily. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then stops and shakes his head. Jonathan understands; it's different in the light.

When the alarm goes off again, Jonathan bangs the correct button unerringly and then stretches, pointing his toes and flexing his fingers out to feel the tug in major muscle groups.

"Okay, headcase," he says at last, affection taking the sting out of the words, "Game day. You want cereal or waffles with your protein shake?"

"Waffles," Sidney grins and stretches himself, then rolls out of bed. "I call first dibs on showers."

He heads off towards the guest room, scratching idly at the back of his neck. Even with lopsided bedhead and wearing a white t-shirt and boxers, he looks more normal than Jonathan has seen in well over half a year, as though talking about the forbidden worries and the worst cases has taken a weight off his bones. Jonathan reluctantly climbs out of bed himself and turns towards the windows. It's still raining, and the Chicago sky is heavy and low and grey, obscuring the taller buildings of the skyline. Jonathan shrugs and wanders out towards the kitchen. He can hear Sidney singing to himself through the wall, and even though nothing has really changed, Jonathan feels lighter anyway.


End file.
